


Before Dawn

by Tari_Sue



Series: Camelot Land [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-16
Updated: 2014-04-16
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:49:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1913352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tari_Sue/pseuds/Tari_Sue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Merlin doesn’t come home, Arthur starts to worry</p>
            </blockquote>





	Before Dawn

**Title:** Before Dawn  
 **Prompts:** Another’s Sorrow, With all my Heart, The Darkest Hour  
 **Word Count** 1501  
 **Rating:** G  
 **Pairings (if any):** Merlin Arthur  
 **Warnings:** hit  & run  
 **Summary:** When Merlin doesn’t come home, Arthur starts to worry.

 

He knew. He knew it when Merlin didn't come home on time, at half past five, same as always, but he thought he was being paranoid and dismissed it.

He should have listened to his instincts.

He worried more, as time drew on and Merlin still hadn't arrived. At six o’clock he tried to call his mobile, but got no response. At half past six and seven he tried again and the sick feeling of dread in his gut intensified.

"Come on Merlin," he muttered under his breath like a prayer. "Come home. Walk though that door and tell me you ran into an old friend and let me see that idiotic grin on your face and I swear I'll never be horrible to you ever again for as long as I live."

It had been such a stupid argument, something over nothing. He'd been having a hard time from his father, who'd never approved of Arthur's relationship with 'that boy', and he'd taken it out on Merlin. What if Merlin was lying dead in a ditch somewhere and the last things Arthur had ever said to him had been petty and mean spirited snipes.

Had Merlin finally grown tired of him? Maybe he'd back to his Mum and simply not bothered to let Arthur know. It didn't sound like the sort of thing Merlin would do, he usually preferred to voice any complaints the moment they entered his head. But it was getting late. Well past the time Merlin should have been home. Maybe he’d gone for a drink, forgotten to let Arthur know. Maybe his phone had no reception. Arthur was just being silly. Merlin would be fine. He wasn’t _that_ late.

Arthur called Gwaine first. If anyone as going to lead Merlin astray it would be Gwaine. They were probably holed up in the Rising Sun getting wrecked and complaining about Arthur.

Gwaine hadn't seen Merlin since three. He’d been at work, Gwaine had left early. Merlin was still there when he left.

He tried Gwen and Lance, perhaps Merlin had gone there to lick his wounds and get fed. He made Gwen worry, which made Arthur feel guilty. Neither of them new where Merlin was.

Leon, Percy, Freya, he even tried Will, and he hated Will. Nothing. Everyone assumed Merlin was where he always was – with Arthur.

The call to Hunith was the hardest. Something told Arthur that Merlin wasn't there, and he couldn't keep the note of panic from his voice as he asked if her son was there. He got her out of bed. Merlin was not there.

It was gone midnight when the call finally came. Camelot General. Words like 'accident', 'theatre', ‘collision’ and 'intensive care' bounced around his head in no particular order. The oxygen left the room and Arthur found himself sitting on the floor holding the phone like it was a bomb.

This time the call to Hunith was so much worse.

He might have driven to the hospital. He must have really, as he found himself sitting in his car in the A&E car park at ten thirty-eight staring at the outside of the building like going inside might make all this real. Might mean Merlin was dead.

"Merlin Emrys, I got a call… how is he? Is he alright? Can I see him? I'm his partner" _is he alive? Please let him be alive. I need him alive. I need him._

Take a chair, wait, the doctor will be with you shortly. Theatre. Collision. Intensive Care. Intensive Care. Theatre. Crash. Accident. Hit and run. Touch and go.

"Arthur?" Hunith looked like Arthur felt. Her usually neat hair was uncombed, her clothes were rumpled. Her shoes didn't match. She hugged him tight and he wished for about the millionth time that she was his mother, even though that would make him and Merlin brothers.

"How is he? Have they said anything?"

"No, nothing, I'm still waiting to speak to the doctor. I think he's in theatre, I don't know what’s going on."

When the doctor arrived she said a lot of things that Arthur couldn't really take in. Merlin was hit by a car. Hit and run. Merlin. His Merlin. Merlin was still unconscious; they had to take him straight into theatre to stop a bleed.

Hunith, the unstoppable, unflappable, unbreakable Huntih, sank down into a chair and started shaking. Arthur did his best to comfort her. Concentrating on another’s sorrow meant he didn’t have to concentrate on his own.

“He’ll be fine, Hunith, Merlin’s a fighter, you’ll see.” They were just words and they both knew it. Just things you say in this sort of situation. How on earth did he know what people said in this sort of situation? It’s not like he regularly got told that the love of his life was lying in a hospital bed fighting to stay alive. He needed to believe this though. Needed to believe that Merlin would be fine. That he would still be able to come home and have his life lit up by Merlin’s smile. Have his life lit up by Merlin.

 

“Will he live?” That must have been Arthur’s voice, he’s not sure, it doesn’t sound like him.

“The next 24 hours are critical,” the doctor said, trying to look sympathetic. She must have been used to this. Heartache and sorrow and desperation. Merlin was just another patient to her, another name on a form. “We will be keeping him under close observation. Vital signs after surgery are good.”

“Can we see him?” Hunith asked. “Can I see my boy?”

“Of course. He’s in an induced coma, we will be bringing him round tomorrow. But he might like to hear your voices. Talk to him.” The Doctor leads them down a corridor into a side room.

Merlin almost looked like he was sleeping, except for the bandages ¬and the wires and the machines. And the fucking great bruise on his temple.

Merlin had always been pale, but now he looked like a pen and ink drawing, all black and white except for the red cuts and scraps. Suddenly the room had no oxygen in it again and Arthur couldn’t breath.

“Arthur?” Hunith’s voice sounded like she was talking under water.

He felt himself being pushed down into a chair and he struggled to suck the air into his lungs. Panic attack. He hadn’t had one of these for years, not since he met Merlin. He used to get them, at school, amid fears of not being good enough and disappointing his father.

Hunith’s gentle hand rubbed circles on his back and felt immediately guilty for taking her away from her son. His eyes drifted back to the figure in the bed. “Merlin,” he croaked.

A nurse came in with a plastic cup of water and Arthur gratefully guzzled it down. “Thank you,” he said to the nurse, who gave him a sympathetic smile and left.

“I’m sorry,” he said to Hunith, who was sitting by the bed now.

“What for? Loving my son? Don’t ever apologise for that, Arthur.”

“For being weak.” That’s what his father always called him when he had these anxiety attacks. Weak. Useless. A disappointment.

“You are not weak, Arthur. You are one of the strongest people I have ever met. You are so good for Merlin. He needed someone like you. He still does. And you really do love him, don’t you?”

Arthur went over to the seat on the other side of the bed and took Merlin’s hand.

“With all my heart. It’s me that needs him. Everything that I am, I am because of him. He makes me a good person. I wasn’t a good person when I met him.”

“Merlin didn’t make you anything that wasn’t already inside you, Arthur.”

“I can’t live without him.” His voice cracks and he can do nothing as hot tears start to spill down his face. He hasn’t cried since he was six and his father told him to stop being such a sissy. “He’s everything to me.”

“You won’t have to. You said it yourself, Merlin is strong, he _will_ get through this. And we will be here to help him.”

“Do you hear that, Merlin?” Arthur asked, wiping his face. “Your Mum says you have to get better, and I know you are a good little mummy’s boy so be careful to do what she tells you.”

“That’s right, mister,” Hunith adds, giving Arthur a watery smile. “I need both my boys fit and well, do you hear? That includes you, Arthur.”

It would be hard to put a time frame on how long they sat there, holding Merlin’s hand, talking to him. When Arthur went out to grab two teas from the machine there a dim light was trying to break though the sky. Dawn. The darkest hour is right before dawn. The way ahead was light, Merlin would get better, they had to believe that. They’d faced their darkest hour.


End file.
